Fix Bayonets! A Royal Welch Fusilier at War, 1796-1815 (review)

Donald E. Graves is one of the most pre-eminent military historians of the Napoleonic Wars in Europe, and of Britain's war with America of 1812-14. Whilst most of his other works have concentrated on specific campaigns, Graves takes here as his subject a single officer, Major Thomas Pearson, who had repeatedly appeared in the battles and campaigns which have been the subject of the author's previous works. This might lead a new reader of Fix Bayonets! to perceive this book as a biography. Although having as its central focus the life and actions of a single individual, due to the fact that Pearson left no diaries or correspondence, nor did members of his family, Graves has been forced to concentrate on other primary sources. In charting Pearson's military career in the Napoleonic Wars, Graves uses the diaries and correspondences of the subject's peers and contemporaries. In charting Pearson's youth and formative years, a comparable family is used as a template. As such the family of a Norfolk Parson demonstrates how Pearson might have grown up, despite the fact that Pearson grew up in Somerset, on the other side of England. If this were a biography, such an approach might critically undermine the scholarly rigour of the work.

As soon as the reader abandons the belief that this is a biography of a soldier, a highly important and illuminating work is revealed. Furthermore, this adds an element to the scholarly literature of the Napoleonic Wars that has been overlooked in the past. Despite the fact that Pearson left no documentation of his career, by following this one soldier through an enormously varied and interesting military career, Graves has managed to provide a book which describes what it was like to fight for Britain at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century. There are, of course, plenty of works that explain the conditions of battle and operations in various campaigns, such as Rory Muir's exemplary Tactics and the Experience of Battle in the Age of Napoleon (London: Yale University Press, 1998). But these, in general, look at specific campaigns, or take a holistic approach, drawing general conclusions. Graves, on the other hand, demonstrates just how diverse and difficult a soldier's life was. Pearson fought on three continents, from the Low Countries of Europe to Northern Africa, from Scandinavia to the West Indies, from the Iberian Peninsula to North America. By following Pearson on his deployments, the degree to which a soldier devoted his life to the military is brilliantly portrayed. Herein lies the beauty of Graves' research: the Napoleonic War is glaringly seen as a truly global war, which had catastrophic influences on individuals as well as states. In some ways, after reading this book, the Napoleonic War seems more familiar. Soldiers did not fight in one campaign, or in one theatre; they travelled the world, and fought battles in wildly different locations. Alongside this dramatic demonstration, the gruelling monotony and hardship of soldiering is portrayed in stark contrast.

Also of value, is Graves's description of the various battles and campaigns themselves. Meticulous research has produced, amongst others, one of the best and most important narratives and analyses of the battle of Albuera during the Peninsular War, since Oman's seminal History of the Peninsular War (7 vols., London: Greenhill Books, first published 1922, republished 1996). This immensely complex battle was a bloodbath for the British, despite holding off the advance of Marshal Soult's Army of the South. Graves brilliantly portrays the horror and difficulty of fighting in the battle itself, but also explains the reasons behind the battle and its impact. Although his focus is a single soldier, Graves does not miss the opportunity to explain the events in which his subject takes part. The result is a truly individual history of...